A new button in Pinterest's iOS app makes it much easier to add those pumpkin-seed muffin recipes to your boards. Considering around 80 percent of Pinterest's traffic comes from mobile devices, it's surprising it took the company so long. To find the button, simply launch a mobile browser, click the Share option and then the ellipsis that says "More" underneath. Once there, find Pinterest and toggle it on, then you'll see its icon on the Share panel next time you want to save a web page. It worked not just on Safari, but also for Chrome when we tested it, so we recommend trying to add the button on your favorite browser first (and then go bake the muffins).

It's now easier to "pin" images you like from Instagram, Etsy and Polyvore, thanks to the first fruits of Pinterests' developer platform released back in May. The app/website now features IFTTT and Polyvore integration, letting you log into those services with a Pinterest account and do some serious cross-posting. For instance, if you link it with IFTTT, you can easily pin any photo straight from Instagram or Etsy (among other websites) and take advantage of Pinterest recipes, such as the one that automatically tweets photos you pin.

You've spent a lot of time collecting those dream dresses on your Pinterest board, but at the end of the day, you still have to actually go to the store to buy them. No longer. Pinterest has just introduced Buyable Pins, which lets you buy items directly from the Pinterest interface. If a pinned item is buyable, you'll see a blue Buy It button right next to the regular red Pin It one. As for what sorts of items? Well, Pinterest already has around 2 million products from retail partners like Macy's, Nordstroms and Neiman Marcus with products that range from clothing to furniture. Slideshow-293519

The new Collections tab on Google+ offers a way to organize and share your interests with other people on the network, a la the mother of all cutesy-sharing sites, Pinterest. You're able to create a customized Collection about anything that you like (suggestions: Hello Kitty accessories, Harry Potter spells, summer books, League of Legends champions), complete with photos, videos, links and commentary. Fellow Google+ users are able to follow any Collection set to "public," or you can start a private Collection and keep all of those adorable Hello Kitty backpacks and phone cases to yourself. The Collections feature is live for many users right now, and you should be able to find it in the dropdown tab on the left side of your very own Google+ page.

You may have carefully crafted a Pinterest board to plan your dream vacation, but how are you going to make that trip a reality? Pinterest thinks it can help. The social site has launched an app developer platform that lets you take action based on your boards and individual pins. You could book an itinerary in a travel app based on your pinned destinations, for instance, or create a dinner board based on recipes in a cooking app. The platform is in a US-only beta phase at the moment, so it could be a while before you're using Pinterest-savvy apps. However, it could be worth the wait if you've spent more time yearning for pinned goods than getting them.

Pinterest launched Rich Pins a couple of years ago, adding item prices, author bylines, movie ratings, recipes and just more context in general within each entry. Now, the company's pairing up with Apple to expand the feature and add Install buttons to every pinned iOS app. You'll need to access those pins from an iPhone or an iPad to see the Install button, of course, because clicking them automatically brings up their App Store profile. It's not such a surprising development, seeing as 75 percent of Pinterest's traffic comes from mobile, and it could make finding hidden gems from among the many, many options in iTunes easier. Unfortunately, the visual discovery website didn't announce if it will also be available on Android devices later on. If you're an iOS user, though, you can visit Cupertino's new App Store account or the collection of pins compiled by Pinterest's staff to see the new feature for yourself.

Malware frequently strikes multiple targets, but online services rarely do a great job of warning each other about related threats; your data could be at risk simply because your favorite social network didn't get a heads-up in time. Facebook is clearly sick and tired of this problem, as it just launched a hub that's designed to mount a coordinated defense. Its new ThreatExchange web platform lets services both look up existing threat info and share their discoveries with as many sites as they see fit. If Facebook reels under a botnet attack, it can let others know what to do to protect themselves.

Social networks know that no one wants adverts all up in their feed --it's no wonder they try to sugar coat paid-for posts. Twitter sneaks in "promoted" tweets; Facebook has its "sponsored" posts; and soon you can expect "Promoted Pins" from -- where else? -- Pinterest. The program has been running in beta for a while, but starting January 1st, it's open to all advertisers. What does this mean for you, dear Pinner? Well, we imagine a few more pictures of brand name lattes mixed in with all the photos of rosetta'd lattes. With around 70 million users, the picture-based network might not have the numbers of Twitter or Facebook, but it does have the advantage that many are already using the site to collect and search for things they want. Pinterest is also launching a program called "The Pinstitute" to teach advertisers how to better connect with (and be less annoying to) its users. In reality, it sounds more like analytics and feedback, but anything that might prevent your meticulously curated boards from being soiled with bad branding is fine with us.

Pinterest has just released version 4.0 for iOS, and while it doesn't come with another big feature like the addition of private messaging from August, it dresses up the app in a simpler interface. The fresh, minimal interface boasts bigger images and a cleaner description section underneath the pics. According to its developers, they also gave the app a boost so it launches more quickly when you fire it up, and we did notice that starting Pinterest on the iPhone is now significantly faster. Finally, you'll find buttons somewhere near the top of your profile page, which will let you upload new pins or search through old ones. In Pinterest's announcement post, software engineerSteven Ramkumar said the company's merely bringing these changes to iOS first, so other platforms will eventually get the update in the future.

When you open a new tab in Google's Chrome browser, you're greeted with a search box, rows of recently-visited sites and a tucked-in menu for individual apps. It's really not very inspiring, is it? Pinterest doesn't think so, and thanks to an internal make-a-thon, there's a new Chrome extension that aims to remedy the gray box blues. Once you've installed the add-on, you'll be prompted to select what you're interested in for the day amongst sports, food, photography and several others. When you open a new tab, you'll be greeted with a full-bleed image populated from Artsy, 500px or National Geographic. I'm told these are the libraries for now due to the "good spectrum" of options they house, but more could be on the way later. On top of the visual stimulus, Google Calendar info is situated at the bottom left while weather details for your current location are pulled in from Yahoo. And of course, info for the displayed photo and the ability to pin it is down on the right. The digital repository already has an extension for adding to boards from websites, and that's included here too, but the original will still be available for those who don't want to spice up their tabs.

So let's say you just made this awesome Pinterest board for apartment decorations and want your future-roommate to see the Joker print that's going in the hallway. More importantly, you're curious if she feels the same way about it as you. Well, now neither of you have to leave the app or website to find out because Pinterest has just introduced a messaging feature to the service. As TechCrunch points out, it's an extension of the Send a Pin feature from last year, and it should make collaborating much easier. It's also a natural step toward the project-board app becoming a fully fleshed-out social network. We doubt it'll make your personal style any more palatable to the person that's splitting the bills with you, though.Slideshow-212572

Earlier today, Google announced that it's releasing an SDK for its new Android Wear platform, allowing developers to make apps for Android smartwatches. It looks like Pinterest got a head start, though: The wedding planning bookmarking app is about to update its Android app to work with Android wearables. In particular, if you're near a place you've pinned, you'll get an alert on either your Android phone, tablet or smartwatch. From there, you can get directions too, if you're lost (even though in theory you're already close by). The update -- version 3.0, to be exact -- will hit the Play Store sometime tomorrow. So be ready for that, even though we suspect most of you were not lucky enough to get a free watch at Google I/O today.

Microsoft has made some giant strides in getting big socialnetworks to hop aboard the Windows Phone bandwagon, but Pinterest has long been a no-show. Today, though, that changes: Pinterest has at last released an official beta app for its collection-themed service. You can do most anything you'd do on the company's mobile website, whether it's planning for a car restoration or making an itinerary for your next trip.

Pinterest is doing really well - we're talking $5 billion valuation-level well. And to cement its status as a mega-success, the site has scooped up two former Apple execs to lead engineering and product design. First up is Michael Lopp, who worked on Mac OS X before moving to software company Palantir. As head of engineering, he'll help scale site infrastructure and lead product development teams. On the product design side, Pinterest's appointed Bob Baxley, who worked on Apple's online store. His official title will be head of product design and research.

With over 750 million boards and 30 billion pins, Pinterest has seen nearly a 50 percent increase in new pins in just the last six months. Indeed, CEO Ben Silbermann even calls it the "world's largest human-curated collection of things." Therein, however, lies a problem. With so much information, it can be difficult to find what you really want, but even worse, it becomes really (really) hard to find or even discover new things that might be of interest to you.

Today, in its San Francisco office packed full of journalists and guests, Pinterest announced a new feature that promises to fix that: Guided Search. Contrasting it to Google, Silbermann said that Pinterest's new Guided Search is "more about exploration than it is about an ordered list for every person in the world." So when you type a keyword into the search bar at the top, it'll offer narrower topics that you can focus in on. For example, if you were to search for "chair," it'll show subcategories like "accents" or "living room" or "patio." Silbermann also emphasized that these would be words used by real people, so if you were to search for "hairstyles", some of the suggestions would be "medium length hair" or "up do" or "bangs."

To some, looks are everything. To others, it's all about what's inside. To Pinterest, it's a mixture of both. As such, don't be surprised to see a different look from the social discovery network the next time you use your smartphone's browser. In an effort to bring a one-design-for-all of sorts to handsets, Pinterest has redesigned its mobile website with a layout similar to the one found on the iOS and Android applications. Thanks to these changes, the site now displays a more polished design and a layout that's meant to highlight your most useful pins. If you're looking for quick access, the native apps will still be the way to go, but this should be a fine option to the pin-loving people who prefer to use the mobile browser.

It hasn't been easy to browse Pinterest for pin-worthy things without the help of your friends -- not unless you've been willing to search entire categories, anyway. That hunt should be much easier now that the social network has rolled out its Interests tool on the web. The section recommends relevant items based on what you've pinned in the past. Look for tourist hotspots in a distant city, for example, and Interests will suggest places you might have missed. Pinterest's new advisor isn't yet available worldwide or on mobile devices, but it should reach every member in the near future.

You'll now be able to play GIFs on Pinterest, meaning your cooking, exercise-inspiration and arts-and-crafts boards are about to get a lot more lively. Sure, you've probably seen a GIF or two on the site already, but the new ability to view the graphics in their full, animated glory without clicking through is definitely welcome. And thanks to a play/pause button, you'll be able to start and stop them as you please. According to the Pinterest blog, GIFs will soon be available on the mobile apps -- for now, though, they're limited to the desktop. Now if you'll excuse us, we'll be porting our favorite animated photos from Tumblr (along with an Engadget classic or two) to a brand-new board.

The next time you're searching for that perfect recipe to please your finicky friends' ever-evolving dietary needs (you know, the vegan today/paleo tomorrow types), you won't have to go further than Pinterest. The service is folding in a new search feature that can filter pins down to recipes-only, based on ingredients or even dietary choices. So, say you need to find a gluten-free way to make chocolate chip cookies; you'll be able to do exactly that and even save that recipe -- complete with cooking time, ingredients and servings size data -- to your own dedicated board. There's even an included Indulge Me filter option for those of you that just don't care how much lard you consume in one sitting. Recipe search is only rolling out to the desktop version for now, but it should be making an appearance on mobile sometime soon.

In order to fully flex its digital-collecting muscle on Apple slates, Pinterest has revamped its iPad app with new features for iOS 7. Redesigned navigation is said to gain a speed boost via a bottom-aligned menu and recent boards are kept handy for easy pinning. A press and hold on any board now will bring up a menu for viewing related repositories or sending its contents to your best mates. As you might expect, those extra secret boards that the outfit gifted users with last week will also be accessible, keeping those shopping ideas shrouded until December 25th.

Pinterest doesn't want to just be the place you hoard random internet goodies, or aspirational items for hobby boards -- it wants to become a real social tool. And it's doing that today with Place Pins: private or collaborative travel maps highlighting local places of interest and recommendations. If it sounds like Foursquare without the obnoxious check-ins and "Mayor of..." notifications, that's because it is -- the company's API is powering these pins. Maps loaded up with recommendations for good eats and sights to see can be created in tandem with new boards or added to existing ones and feature all the necessary contact info, like address and phone number, you want when looking up where to go. Pinterest's even set up a feed dedicated to Place Pins(piration) and curated by notable travel outfits like Condé Nast Traveler, Airbnb, Fodor's and others, so you can get a sense of how it works. It's pretty simple, but useful stuff. Now, all you need is a good cluster of jet set friends to get the recommendations rolling and maybe some cash to actually get you out of Podunk and into those real-world, pinned places.

A lot of people use Pinterest to keep track of stuff they'd like to buy, places they want to go and food they want to eat, but there's always been separation between Pinterest and the actual sources of those desires -- you only had the option to click a Pinterest button on a site to pin the content in question to your board of choice. No longer.

Pinterest has taken another step to strengthen its partnerships with third-party websites with the release of its APIs today. The tools allow web developers to embed recent, trending and most-clicked pins (that update regularly according to what folks are pinning), and even implement a Pinterest search surface that surfaces pins of items from your domain surface custom search results on their pages, too. Folks will also now be able to pin stuff directly from websites, so as to not interrupt the retail experience with a detour to Pinterest proper. To illustrate these newly bestowed powers, Pinterest has partnered up with a slew of well-known sites, including Zappos, Target, Walmart, BuzzFeed, and Better Homes And Garden -- and if you'd like the full list and further description of how to use the new APIs, hit the source below.

Update: Our earlier version of this story mistakenly indicated that the new APIs enabled searching Pinterest on third party sites. In fact, the APIs only allow devs to create a custom keyword search and embed those search results on a webpage.

Pinterest may be all about pictures (and some ads), but a deal sealed today with Getty Images will provide users with some very important words as well: photo metadata. Why should you care? It means that you'll now get a whole host of info along with any Getty pictures you pin. So, you'll be able to see things like the title, caption and the photographer's name from any of Getty's vast catalog of pictures. And, that info will make it easier for you to find similar and related photos to stick on Pinterest's digital boards. As for the deal itself, Pinterest is paying Getty an undisclosed sum for the data and will make sure all photos will be properly attributed. In return, Pinterest gets the aforementioned benefits for its users, and eliminates any copyright complications it might have faced from Getty. Two birds, one stone. Well played, Pinterest.

It's been available to Facebook's Android beta testers for a few weeks now, but as of today all Android users can get their hands on the latest update to the company's OS-overhauling app, Home. As you may recall, the big addition with this update is a number of new options that can now be integrated into your lock screen -- namely, Instagram, Tumblr, Flickr, and Pinterest. Once those are added and authenticated, you can start browsing posts from the respective services without actually opening the dedicated app. And... that's about it. You can get a quick look at how the new features work in the video after the break.

If you can't stop checking Pinterest while on the road, today's your lucky day... provided that you subscribe to the right cellular carrier, that is. Pinterest has just released an Android widget that's available exclusively to customers on Telefonica's networks, including O2, Movistar and Vivo. The portal shows both personal feeds and popular items, letting users pin their favorite things from the home screen. At present, the Pinterest widget is available only as a download for O2 UK customers. Telefonica will start preloading the software on O2 phones within a few weeks; rollouts to the brand's other carriers are coming "in due course."